In the data age, how should brands act after a hacker attack?

“Before, it was easy to say, ‘The system is down! The site went offline!’. Today, the repercussion that this situation brings to the company due to so much customer data involved is much greater than we imagined” – explains the head of digital at Blues Idea, Luiza Antoniolli

Between the 19th and 20th of February, Lojas Americanas, in addition to others from e-commerce companies such as Submarino and Shoptime, rocked in the middle of the data era and were victims of scams, fraud, and invasion of their websites by hackers. Companies even have a department dedicated to cybersecurity, but that was not enough to stop the invasions.

The trend is that this scenario is an increasingly recurrent reality in the same proportion as the digitization of business advances.

What happened to the Lojas Americanas?

Lojas Americanas, one of the largest retailers in Brazil, was forced to suspend the operation of part of its servers, which fed e-commerce, after noticing unauthorized access attempts on its platform.

Although the results of the attempted attack were inconclusive — at least what the company notified the public — having a weekend (approximately 72 hours) without the e-commerce operating may have caused a loss of R$ 329.9 million, based on the balance sheet data released in the last quarter by Americanas.

Hacker attacks have been frequent in Brazil, which already occupies the 5th place in the ranking of victims of this type of crime – the country is behind only the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and South Africa, which lead the ranking, as shown data from Roland Berger, a German cybersecurity consultancy.

And what could this hacker attack have taught brands?

For Luiza Antoniolli, head of digital at Blues Idea, after years of building a reliable eCommerce for the customer, the company will need to reposition itself in the market and restart a very heavy branding work. “Before, it was easy to say “The system has fallen! The site went offline!”. Nowadays, the repercussion that this situation brings to the company due to so much data from customers involved, such as credit card numbers, CPFs, etc., is much greater than we imagined. But anyway, this is the Data Age. And we have to be more than prepared for what’s to come!

Source: Modern Consumer